Planny Plannerson

I am a planner. I will come up with a very specific, highly defined plan. I don't always stick to my plan, but I'll be darned if I don't have some sort of plan in mind, regardless of what adventure I am beginning. Granted, I'm not as bad as my friend Corey who was pained to go into the grocery store without a list. I know, I know...I'm a list person too, but we were buying groceries for one meal. One. For the two of us. I digress...

Earlier this week I decided I was fed up with the fact that one little button on my cell phone wasn't working. It was the "up" key. This was especially annoying when I would scroll through my contacts and go too fast and then not be able to go up and select the right one. I called tech support to try to remedy the situation. Apparently a lot of dropping on the ground is not good for your cell phone (and is not what the company calls a "manufacturer defect").

After much research I discovered that I was eligible for the deepest discounted upgrade and made the decision to purchase a similar phone for under $20. It rings, the buttons work, great. That was my plan.

I've mentioned before that my dear friend Joe is always willing to come along for the ride, right?

So the two of us visited the T-Mobile store, and as I walk over to the more conservatively-priced phones, Joe heads straight for the fancy stuff. Apparently, the phone he had been trying to convince me to get (the one he has) was available to me at 50% off ... oooh. And I kind of wanted it. I had been carrying around my ATC cell phone, my personal/BeautiControl cell phone & my Palm Pilot (now about 4 years old) and it was just too much. So the SDA is a phone and holds my contacts and my calendar and syncs to my Outlook and has internet capabilities and more I'm sure, if I sit down and read the manual.

I was interested but skeptical, and over walks Mr. Salesman. Now Mr. Salesman is not a very good salesman. He doesn't know much and just stands there and Joe tells me all the reasons why I need this phone. I ask a question. Mr. Salesman says "I don't know," and Joe answers. This continues.

I decide to buy the phone.

We get into a discussion about commissions because I'm feeling sort of bad that I talked to T-Mobile woman on the phone for nearly an hour the other day, but now I'm buying it from Mr. Salesman. Mr. Salesman says that the phone people don't get commissions--they provide customer service "for the good of the company."

So we ask, "Do you get a commission?"

"Yeah, "he replies.

Joe then spends a great deal of time trying to convince Mr. Salesman that he should buy Joe a coffee from Starbucks (right across the parking lot) because I wouldn't have purchased the much more expensive phone had he not been there (and this is true). Mr. Salesman completely ignored him. It was at first a bit uncomfortable and then really funny. We would talk about him in the third person as he was organizing my new toy.

He didn't blink, and nothing tall, grande, or venti was exchanged.